Caroline Mazel-Carlton serves as Director of Training for the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community (WMRLC), promoting an ethos of self-determination and mutual support in a number of settings across the globe. She has been privileged to be a facilitator/trainer for the "Alternatives to Suicide" approach, promoting conversation and connection over the current paradigm of "risk assessment." Caroline also works towards developing regional networks of support for voice-hearers in her role as Director of Training Coordinator for the Hearing Voices Research and Development Project. She serves on the Board of Directors of Hearing Voices USA and is the Director of Training for the Wildflower Alliance.
She first interfaced with psychiatry at the age of eight, and years later was able to find a path out of a world defined by diagnoses and medications through roller derby and social activism. Since moving out of a staffed group home, she has worked tirelessly to create change in the mental health system, developing and re-defining peer roles and values in various organizations around the country. Her work with “Alternatives to Suicide” and the Hearing Voices Network has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Foreign Policy and O magazine.